Business Continuity Through WAN Redundancy

Site Load Balancing provides resiliency and continuity for your business. It can distribute traffic between two sites, utilizing all lines available at each site. Unlike traditional master backup solutions Site Load Balancing utilizes both sites: bandwidth and other resources. Site Load Balancing gives you more availability of your other services.

Lack of a Business Continuity Plan is fraught with the danger of having a business vulnerable to various interruptions. From a data perspective, businesses that plan for disasters improve their chances of recovering very quickly, while those that do not have a plan scramble in panic. Those that are unprepared lose money and customers and oftentimes suffer irreparable harm to their reputations. A few key Business Continuity concerns are listed below.

• Bandwidth Management
• Server Accessibility
• Cyber Criminals
• Pandemics
• Terrorist Strikes
• Transportation stoppage

• Bandwidth Reliability
• Network Recovery
• Network Security
• Staffing
• Natural Disasters
• Data Storage

A Business Continuity Plan, from a protecting data planning perspective, calls for Data Mirroring, Off-Site Data Storage, and WAN Redundancy. Data Mirroring and Off-Site Data Storage are required to handle emergencies such as 9/11, Katrina, Tsunami, and other rare but catastrophic events.

Of the three mentioned above, WAN Redundancy is the most critical because it happens most frequently. Intermittent WAN failures and disruptions happen often enough they have to be taken into account when developing a Business Continuity Plan. It is estimated that WAN Redundancy will take care of 35% of all Business Continuity concerns. Thus a small effort in the area of WAN Redundancy has a big payback.

"The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee"
-Robert Greenleaf

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